CHICAGO—What should volunteers for Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign tell voters about her policy positions? It’s hard to say.
Over the course of the Democratic National Convention, Harris’s staff held several messaging sessions for supporters of her presidential run. There, attendees were given a crash course on how to convince their friends and family to vote for Harris this November.
But several of them left those sessions, which the Washington Free Beacon attended, a bit befuddled. There was no clear policy outline for campaign volunteers to bring home, nor would any staff members commit to a position on a variety of contentious issues.
The meetings provided a glimpse into how Harris’s staff seek to position their candidate for November, although the risks were glaring. With newly energized Democratic voters excited to spread the good word about her campaign, many were not sure how they should counter former president Donald Trump’s protectionist pitch for the Rust Belt.
When asked by the Free Beacon, for example, about how voters should square the Harris campaign's repeated criticism, and sometimes mockery, of Trump’s tariff proposals when the White House has made many of its predecessor’s tariffs permanent, deputy communications director Brooke Goren said, "I’m not going to get into proposals about what the vice president might roll out in the future."
"There’s a difference between targeted trade proposals that they believe are smart and targeted," she said.
One attendee—who declined to be named, but was interested in volunteering for Harris in his home state of Wisconsin—told Harris's deputy communications director that he had received "no literature" to distribute to curious voters at a Harris field office. How, that person asked, can they tell people to vote for Harris when the campaign is so light on policy details?
That person was asked to meet with Harris’s staff after the meeting, although it is not clear what the two parties discussed. The public shouldn’t expect a comprehensive policy platform from Harris anytime soon, either.
When the staff was asked whether Harris’s website will ever feature a "policy or issue section," Goren said Harris "has been out there, talking about policy."
"It’s going to be a core piece of our messaging, and you can expect more to come on that," she added.
As for the immediate future, Harris’s supporters should stick to a script when speaking with other voters. There, too, Harris’s campaign was light on what details volunteers should provide the public.
A second meeting held the next day explained how volunteers should persuade undecided voters. If you see a post on the social media platform Nextdoor, a Harris staffer said, about whether "others are feeling" the squeeze from high grocery costs, volunteers are encouraged to post a reply.
"Make [your post] connect to the election," a slide read. "The Biden-Harris administration passed the Inflation Reduction Act, Vice President Harris has made lowering costs for middle class families a top priority." Economists agree that the Biden-Harris administration actually helped fuel inflation via the nearly $2 trillion American Rescue Plan, which Democrats passed in 2021.
Moreover, nothing in the Inflation Reduction Act is intended to reduce costs of food. The bill largely spends money on a variety of green energy projects, and implements caps on prescription drug costs.
Economists expect the nearly $800 billion law to actually slightly raise inflation until the end of 2024 with a negligible impact on consumer costs over the next decade. Harris was the tie-breaking vote in the Senate to pass the law in August 2022.
"It’s really important for folks to be hearing this," the Harris staffer said. "They may not know it."
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